In a continuing effort to improve the quality of fresh market and shipping fruits, we, the inventors, typically hybridize a large number of nectarine and peach seedlings each year. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of nectarine tree, which has been denominated varietally as `Candy Sweet`. The present variety was developed by us in 1992 in a cultivated area of our experimental orchard at Bradford Farms near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). It was a first generation cross using `Red Diamond` (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 3,165) nectarine as the seed parent and an unnamed yellow flesh nectarine seedling as the selected pollen parent. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of nectarine tree, we asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting on Nemaguard (unpatented) rootstock, in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects.
The present variety is most similar to its seed parent, the `Red Diamond`, by producing yellow flesh nectarines that are mostly red in skin color, very firm in texture, and that ripen the last week in June, but is distinguished therefrom and an improvement thereon by having a showy instead of nonshowy blossom and by producing fruit that is much sweeter in flavor, that is clingstone instead of freestone, and that is larger in size.